Reviews

The story of African Connection started back in 2016, when members of Danish band Junglelyd decided to accompany Ghanaian musician Atongo Zumba for a tour in his home country. The chemistry evolved from being on the road together and sharing the stage for a month, proved so strong, the Danes decided to turn it into a permanent project.

For Malagasy Guitar Masters, three generations of Malagasy guitar heroes joined forces: Teta, a genius from Toliaro specialized in the so-called tsapiky-style, Chrisanto Zama comes from that same province but is a generation younger, specializing in rodaringa, a very rhythmic style, and tsinjabey, Malagasy funeral music, and finally, Joël Rabesolo, the youngest of the bunch, nicknamed the Malagasy Jimi Hendrix.

With 'Noite Que Brincou De Lua' by duo Edu Passeto and Gui Tavares, Far Out Recordings dusts off another unjustly forgotten gem from the MPB or musica popular Brasileira scene of the early nineteen eighties.

Yours truly got to know Ryon, a band from the South West of France, two years ago when they released their acclaimed album debut 'Rêver'. On that album we were mostly struck by two things: firstly, the fact we were finally dealing with a French band putting the language of Molière first again, and second, that even though musically the songs on 'Rêver' were beyond reproach, the content of the tracks clearly outweighed the music. For successor 'Zéphyr', the band fortunately left this recipe unaltered.

City Kay, the London based band around vocalist Jay Pharaoh, already gave us a preview of this new album in November of last year with the release of the 'Mad Men' EP. The 4 tracks from that EP ('Mad Men', 'Man Cultivation Struggle', 'Run For Your Soul' and the duet with Johnny Osbourne 'Throw Away Your Guns'), also feature in the track list of 'Strange Things'. We already determined the four songs on the EP sounded a lot more eclectic than the tracks on predecessor 'Daystar', and the band seems to have baptized that sound, a mix of ambient, electro, pop, hip-hop and new roots, as "abstract roots".

Especially for International Women's Day, British producer Steve Vibronics presents 'Woman On A Mission', a compilation for which he exclusively invited female vocalists.

Dub Store Records has earned itself a reputation for their high quality reissues of rare gems from ska, rocksteady, reggae and dub history. 'Concrete Jungle Dub', originally released on Dennis Harris' London based Concrete Dub label in 1976, is still considered to be one of the rarest LP's in that last category!

We would have preferred to have been able to present you our view on this sixth volume in the annual 'Songs For Reggae Lovers' series running up to Valentine's day, but unfortunately we could only get our hands on the double compilation album now. However, true love has no expiration date, so this collection should still serve its purpose. Unlike the previous edition, the first disc doesn't feature new releases and the second a series of classics, but what binds the tracks on 'Songs For Reggae Lovers 6', is the fact this time all tracks selected are duets, each time with a male and female vocalist (as the cover image kind of illustrates).

Alam is a band around vocalist Marie Biguereau from the Gironde region in Southwest France. In Indonesian band name Alam translates as "nature", in Arabic as "the world", and in the Tagalog-dialect of the Philippines as "to know".

Yet another Californian reggae band? Indeed, Common Kings are a quartet hailing from Orange County but with shared roots in the South Pacific.